


Board of Being Alone

by idioticfangirl



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Prejudice, idk like rude against drug users
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6439690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idioticfangirl/pseuds/idioticfangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The modern-day Romeo and Juliet, a skateboarder and a teacher's pet.<br/>With added swearing, drugs, detentions and bitchy witches.<br/>Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Board of Being Alone

Everyone knows the cliques that come with every age group in education. You have the preps, the goody two-shoes, the stoners, the class clowns, the jocks, and the rejects. Portland High School was no different, and so it was that, one fine afternoon, almost the entirety of the school was enjoying their lunch in the sun, all in different areas of the campus. The jocks were working on their basketball in the outdoor courts, with the cheerleaders watching on and enjoying the way the sweat made their skin shine. The class clowns were sitting around a bench, and every so often a roar of laughter would arise, making the goody two-shoes at a nearby bench sigh loudly before going back to studying, talking in low tones. The rejects were milling around, attempting to join any group and failing miserably, and the stoners had taken over the skateboard park to lay on the hot concrete and talk about anything.

On this particular day, the stoners in question were Eddie Monroe and Rosalee Calvert, both smoking a joint and making out, while Nick Burkhardt looked uncomfortable next to them from where he was still attempting to get Monroe's attention about something. From the way he was eagerly pointing from his skateboard, currently lying dormant at his feet, and the ramp, it could only be assumed that he wanted to show them a trick.

Enter Hank Griffin and Drew Wu, stage right. They were both carrying piles of books, to the point where they could barely see where they were going, and were making their way across the campus to their particular clique, the nerds. It was at this point that things started to go wrong.

Wu, being smaller than Hank, was carrying less books and was therefore just able to peer over them to notice that they were about to cross the skate park. He stopped, calling for Hank to do so to.

"What?" Hank was in a hurry, since he had just found out that there had indeed been chemistry homework from the class that he had missed, although over the past week he had asked seven people about it and only now, an hour before the lesson, did anyone tell him.

Wu nodded in what he assumed was the general direction of the skate ramp. "Skaters," he explained shortly, "let's go around."

"They don't own the skatepark!" Hank's fuse was clearly running even shorter than usual, Wu noticed. "Let's just go!"

"Well, they are on skateboards, so technically they have more right to be there than..." Wu began, but by this point Hank was already marching over the concrete, teetering stack of books balanced precariously in his hands. 

Also at this point, Nick had got Monroe's attention and was careening off the ramp at a dangerously fast pace. 

There was only one way this could go.

BANG! Hank's books toppled to the floor, followed by Hank himself, groaning and clutching his ankle.

"I'm so sorry," Nick apologised profusely, pulling off his helmet and abandoning his damaged board in favour of inspecting the injured man in front of him, "I didn't see you."

"Were you looking?" Hank growled, opening his eyes for a split second so that he knew who he was chewing out. The man in front of him, he noticed, seemed surprisingly un-high for a drug addict, eyes sparkling above his perfectly moulded cheek and jaw as he hovered awkwardly above Hank, looking as though he was considering touching him to check for injuries before instead running his hands through his already terribly messy black hair.

"Of course I was looking!" he seemed genuinely insulted at the question, "You're the one who walked across the middle of a skate park without checking! What, are you surprised that there were skateboards? Did you think the name was some kind of metaphor?"

"Well, maybe if you weren't high, you would have seen me!"

"I -" the man was lost for words, which Hank took as a point to him, "I'm not -" he sighed, "nevermind. Want a hand up?" He reached out for Hank's hand, and, after a moment's hesitation, Hank took it.

The second that he stood up, Hank knew he was in trouble. His left leg refused to take any of his weight, causing him to stumble sideways, with only the surprisingly strong grip of the stranger on his shoulder keeping him upright.

"Broken?" the man asked, and Hank sighed. Really, this was just what he needed.

"Just sprained, I think. No need to go to the hospital."

"You can't walk around campus like that. Not with those, at least," he pointed to the scattered textbooks flapping in the breeze. "Where'd your friend go?" Wu was trotting over with some trepidation, looking both ways every few seconds despite the fact that no-one seemed in the least inclined to start skating, especially not with one person already injured.

"You think you can help him walk?" Wu nodded, before shaking his head forlornly. "I can't carry all of these books and Hank," he replied, shrugging.

"I'll take the books," Hank's attacker liberated Wu of the books before proceeding to pick up all of the ones that Hank had dropped, so that by the end they were piled far above his head. "It's the least I can do. Go on then," his head popped comedically out from the side of the mountain of books, "lead the way."

Although there were some narrow misses involving trees and basketballs, the three of them managed to get across to the bench that Hank and Wu had been aiming for without anyone else damaging themselves, and deposited both the books and Hank on the seat. "Well," the skateboarded turned to leave, "I hope your ankle gets better soon, and remember not to walk in front of skateboards from now on!" He tried for a jaunty wave, but Hank wasn't having any of it.

"Be back here at the end of lunch," he smirked at the man's confused expression, and raised a testing eyebrow. "I'm going to need you to carry my stuff to lessons until I'm better. It's the least you can do."

"Well," the other man sighed, and ran his hand through his hair, a habit of his that Hank knew he would find annoying soon, "fine. I'm Nick, by the way, since we're going to be seeing so much more of each other."

"Griffin." Hank nodded.

"No, not Nick Griffin, Nick Burkhardt." Was this guy an idiot?

"I'm Griffin. My friends call me Hank, but you can call me Griffin."

"Ouch," once more, Nick seemed to mean what he said, "alright, Griffin, see you around."

"You know I can carry stuff to your lessons?" Wu pointed out when Nick was gone, and Hank winked.

"Gotta make him pay for what he did, though, haven't we?"

 

"You're late," Hank announced as soon as Nick jogged over, out of breath and panting slightly, which was what he got for doing drugs, really.

"Sorry, I had to," Nick waved a hand in the general direction that he had come from, but Hank cut off his explanation.

"I take it back, I don't care. Just pick up my stuff and lets go, I can't be late to chemistry."

"Chemistry?" Nick asked, attempting to balance his bag, Hank's ridiculously heavy bad and half of Hank's weight without falling over, "you do chemistry?"

"What do you care?"

"What else do you do?" 

"None of your business," Hank announced, swinging his bag off Nick's shoulder with difficulty and stumbling into the room without so much as a thank you. Nick watched him into the room until he was sure that he wasn't going to turn and express any form of gratitude, and also, although he wouldn't admit it to himself, so that he didn't fall, before sighing and trudging to the other side of the campus, where his class had probably already started.

 

The next time Nick saw Hank was the very next day, when he was stopped at lunch by a bag dumped on the table in front of him. He ignored Monroe and Rosalee's twin looks of surprised as he instead huffed his annoyance at the voice saying, "You forgot to help me."

"Not your slave," Nick pointed out around a mouthful of sandwich, "and you didn't even thank me!"

"Well, you did sprain my ankle."

"Look, you were the one that walked out onto a skatepark without looking! How am I the bad guy here?" Monroe put a hand on Nick's shoulder, and he realised that his voice had been building up until by the end the entire lunch hall was watching him with undisguised interest. Hank said nothing, but he sat down heavily in the seat opposite Nick, pulled out a textbook (biology, Nick noticed with interest), and fell into reading without hesitation. 

When the bell went to signal beginning of lessons, Nick picked up the bag without needing to be asked again, and Hank grudgingly took his offered arm to walk to his lesson.

 

"What was that about, dude?" Monroe hissed after school that day.

"I'm carrying his books around so that I don't get blamed for spraining his ankle, Monroe. It's a small price to pay."

"It wasn't your fault!" Monroe pointed out, throwing his arms in the air when Nick merely shrugged and climbed onto his bike, "he can't blame you!"

"He does," was Nick's only reply.

 

"Get up to anything last night?" Hank asked when Nick showed up, already reaching for the other man's bag as he walked. Nick looked inexplicably pleased at Hank's asking, but instead of launching into a spiel of the video game he had played and the new episode of his favourite TV show that he had watched, he shook his head softly.

"Nah, not really, I had some homework to catch up on. You?"

Hank jumped in with the punchline. "No new drugs, then?" he snarked, his tone making his feelings about said drugs clear, and the look of surprise on Nick's face was almost worth it, almost worth it but for the hint of confusion and hurt that came directly after it, even as he laughed it off, looking uncomfortable.

"I don't - not really -" Nick struggled to put together a sentence, and by the time he had something even halfway to being ready Hank was marching into his classroom, a smirk on his face that indicated he considered this one-nil to him. 

Nick hadn't even realised there was a competition.

 

Nick was good with comebacks, fast and sarcastic and pulling no punches when he wanted to be, but Hank had the edge that he didn't. For reasons unknown to Nick, or anyone that Nick associated with (mainly Monroe and Rosalee, let's be honest), Hank seemed to honestly dislike him to the point of hatred, and it wasn't like Nick could just ask why.

So he rolled with the punches, throwing a few himself when Hank went too far. and neither of them apologised or explained it but it was clear that something was going on. Hank called Nick a stoner or a druggie too many times, and Nick quietly mocked the other man's nerdiness, and they got along just fine. Terribly, but just fine.

 

 

The only class that Hank actively disliked was chemistry. Which was a shame, because as a subject he loved it, loved mixing together chemicals and seeing what would happen, loved seeing how everything that was taken for granted could be explained with science.

Adelind Shade was a bitch, though. Right at the beginning of their first year, she had asked him out, and, shocked by the idea that anyone as good looking as her would want to date him, Hank had accepted. It wasn't until over a month later, after Hank had lost his virginity and self-control and would quite happily do anything for her, that it was revealed she was only dating him to make Sean Renard jealous. Wu had saved Hank from that, and he was eternally grateful.

When Renard had abandoned her quite easily, with rumours flying about him and her mother, Adelind had turned to Hank again, only to find him impervious to her charms. She had hated him ever since.

And she was dedicated to making chemistry, the only lesson they shared together (Hank was certain that she was studying it to become a witch in later life), a living hell. She would trip him up when he tried to go to the front, or move his pens so that he spent the entire lesson chasing them as people passed them around under her command, or pour things into his experiments without looking so that it blew up and the smoke alarm went off and everyone was forced to stand in the quad in the pouring rain, blaming him the whole time.

Today, she had a different plan. When the teacher told everyone to find a partner, she shot up, ignoring the hopeful looks from many desperate young men (and some young women) and strode purposefully over to Hank, who didn't have time to do more than send Wu a helpless glance before she was at his desk, smiling in a way that would be sweet on anyone else and saying, "So, partner, shall we start?"

With Adelind, it was futile to attempt to do anything other than go along with whatever she was planning, at least until you worked it out by which point it was too late, so Hank allowed her to work with him, ensuring the whole time that she slipped nothing unusual into his solution. 

When she didn't attempt any trickery in the first fifteen minutes, Hank allowed himself to relax, to let down his guard. Big mistake. One second he was reaching around Adelind, who had stepped in front of him for some godforsaken reason, to adjust the temperature of the bunsen burner, the next she was screaming and slapping his hand so hard that he knocked it over, yelling something about 'don't touch me!' which was ridiculous, what could she possibly mean, who was...

"Griffin!" the professor snapped, stomping over to his desk, "Don't you touch her!"

"I...I wasn't, I was dealing with the bunsen burner and she..."

"He harassed me and when I tried to stop him he dropped a bunsen burner on me!" Adelind wailed, in hysterics, and Hank couldn't speak through the naked shock in his veins.

"I have had enough of this, Griffin!" and now it was too late for Hank to protest, "Detention after school today. Now get out!" Hank left.

 

He tried not to worry about it, really he did, but this was Hank's first detention and he couldn't get it out of his head. The whole day was torture, unable to do anything besides think and think and rethink what his parents would say, what his friends would say, whether this would go on his permanent record.

After school came too fast, and not fast enough. Hank could feel the eyes of hundreds of students on him as he timidly entered the room, could hear the whispers of 'look at that, Griffin's got himself a detention!'. But when he turned around, only a few still stood at their lockers, none of them particularly interested in him.

"Oh, for God's sake," he muttered as soon as he walked in, unable to contain himself. Even through the knots in his stomach, the sight of a familiar black head of hair gave Hank that strange feeling of anger, but not quite anger, more...need.

"Thought you didn't get detentions?" Nick asked, without looking up. He had an open textbook in front of him, and appeared to be working hard, but Hank knew that it was probably the guest list for a party.

"Ever met Adelind Schade?" his mouth worked before he could even think, and this seemed to catch Nick's interest, whether because of the name or the fact that Hank actually replied he didn't know.

"'Course I do, everyone knows her. What's she got against you?" Nick answered carefully.

"Turned her down once and she never let me live it down."

Nick laughed, a short bark that shocked Hank out of his daze of fear at his surroundings. "I wish I could have seen that. She doesn't like me either, tried to make my life hell, but," he shrugged, "can't really get to me."

"What are you here for?"

Nick's head swung back to his textbook, flipping a page half-heartedly as his knee jerked up and down.

"Doing drugs?" Hank guessed, and this time Nick's laugh was bitter.

"I don't do drugs, you know that, right?" he met Hank's eyes without flinching. "Sure, I have, and I'm not against doing it again, there's something...magical about seeing things no-one else sees, but I don't actually do them. Not properly. Monroe and Rosalee are nice people, and my best friends. It was nice of them to stick with me after Juliette left me."

Hank's mouth was dry, trying to work out where he, of all people, went wrong. Granted, he had never been much good at reading people, but he read facts, and they all pointed to drug abuse. Or, he supposed, not really. They pointed towards an attractive man that Hank couldn't quite work out, and he had turned to his own prejudices to deal with it.

"So, why are you here?" It was the closest to a peace offering he could get.

Or not. "Being late to lessons," Nick's mouth twisted humourlessly, "for the past two weeks."

"You got a detention?"

"I got three."

Crap. "Crap, I'm sorry, I -" Nick waved him off.

"Don't be, I'm not bothered. Gotta do my homework anyway, right? Here or at home, doesn't matter to me." Hank moved closer, and peered over his shoulder.

"Biology?"

Nick shrugged. "I was thinking of being a cop when I got older, maybe a detective. I like biology so I thought what the hell, might be useful."

"No way, me too!"

"You like biology too?"

Hank raised an eyebrow, although from the sparkle in Nick's eyes he assumed this to be a joke. "No, I want to be a cop."

"Huh. Great minds really do think alike. So, what made you think of it?"

 

The detention passed in a blur of swapped stories and phone numbers, until Nick was clambering gracefully on his bike and Hank was sheepishly getting in his mum's car. They waved, grinning, and parted ways. 

Not ten minutes later, Hank received a text saying 'We should do that again sometime. Maybe not in detention, though.'

 

 

School the next morning felt different in some way for Hank. He kept looking out for Nick, even though he would have no reason to be around Hank's friends, until the bell went for first period. To his immediate surprise, followed by a flash of something close to anger and a curl of pleasure, Hank saw his bag being picked up, the exact same way it had been for the past two weeks.

"You're going to get in trouble," he pointed out, grinning at Nick, but he made no effort to take the bag back, or dissuade Nick in any other way.

"I think it's worth it," Nick raised an eyebrow, shouldering the bag and gesturing for Hank to lead the way.

 

 

Due to both of their hectic schedules, the two barely found time to hang out together, doing chores in a rush and leaving homework to the dead of the night before in order to salvage some meetings in parks, and cafes, and libraries. They couldn't find it in them to care, however, because they had a very special time, just for the two of them.

Despite Hank's assurances that yes, Nick, it's been a month and a half so his ankle was fine, Nick didn't stop walking him to lessons, although he did eventually allow Hank to carry his own bag. Sometimes Wu walked with them, always watching Nick in wonder as he sprinted to his lesson to avoid yet another detention, but he didn't question what was going on between the two of them. Hank was grateful for that, although when he caught the look on Wu's face he wondered if the other man was just biding his time, collecting information to use against them both.

"Just kiss already," he exploded at last, having watched the rushed goodbyes one two many times. "This sexual tension is so thick I'm choking!"

Nick recovered from his shock first, leaning forwards to tentatively place a kiss on Hank's lips, awkwardly trying to manoeuvre around the fact that his mouth was slightly parted in shock. When Hank retaliated, however, he really got into it, barely giving Nick time to breathe before his hands were round his waist, in his hair, holding him tight as their mouths worked in time.

"Griffin! Burkhardt!" a teacher, Hank was too dazed to tell who, came storming up to them, "No PDA! Detention after school today. You too, Wu!" and he vanished into an open classroom as quickly as he had appeared.

"But I didn't even," Wu stared after his retreating figure, "do anything?"

"Don't worry, Wu," Nick winked, although he never took his eyes off Hank, "detention can be fun."


End file.
